First look: in-depth with the rogues behind EA’s Dead Space

Dead Space is shaping up to be one of the best horror, science-fiction games …

EA's blind spot: the story behind Dead Space

How risky is it to launch a brand new property in the crowded gaming market? Budgets are only getting larger for big-name titles, the shelves are overflowing with new games, and in most cases it's much less risky to work on a licensed property or a sequel to a known hit. No one knows this better than EA, a publisher that is no stranger to either strategy. Yet something rather unexpected is happening with one of the world's largest game publishers: EA is launching two brand new games, and doing so in a huge way. Even more unexpected, one of the them, Dead Space, is a survival horror game set in deep space. That genre, from this company, sounds like a terrible idea—how many times do we need to rescue a deep-space facility from mutants?—which is perhaps why EA has offered previews of Dead Space to a select group of writers. The publisher thinks it has something special, and so does the team behind the game. The trick is convincing a jaded market that EA can do horror well.

"EA is going to survive whether or not Dead Space does well," Glen Schofield tells us. We're sitting with the intense-looking executive producer of the title that EA hopes will bring horror back to gaming, and he's telling us about the game's genesis in January 2006. He's also skeptical of the idea that EA has some grand plan to push new properties out the door; the original three person team was given the green light years ago, under the power of Larry Probst, a CEO that was famously reluctant to back M-rated titles. This "aw shucks" routine is a little precious; Dead Space has enjoyed a high level of buzz in the past few months, especially since its successful showing at E3.

Dead Space wants to mix gothic grandeur with good ol' down home horror

It's also hard to take the idea that EA isn'tmaking a dedicated push for new properties seriously. I've flown into EA's San Francisco office to see Dead Space in near-complete form, and EA seems to be enjoying the press it has received since hyping its two newest properties: Dead Space and Mirror's Edge. As I noted above, each game is a brand-new property with some serious talent involved. Not only that, but the Dead Space game is only a part of the puzzle: Dead Space comic books by Antony Johnston and Ben Templesmith have already been released, and an animated movie is in the works. Even the selection of writers at this Dead Space event indicates that EA has designs past the gaming world: writers from big-name game sites are nearly out-numbered by journalists from movie publications and horror blogs. In a surreal touch, Robert Scoble is seen twittering about the game in EA's arcade. The marketing blitz has begun, but Schofield assures us this didn't start with a large budget, and is only recently enjoying the full force of EA's promotional power. In fact, mirroring what we've heard from some other studios recently, the game stayed away from EA's oversight for a long time.

Glen Schofield

"I don't have to look over my shoulder to get approvals... I don't have to go to any movie studio, I don't have to go to anybody... it has been a blast to make," Schofield explains. "We've kind of been this rogue team for a long time, that has been like 'We're making a good game over here!'" he mimics waving his hand to get someone's attention. "It's been somewhat recently that people go 'Wow, this looks like a pretty good game.'" Across two CEOs and almost three years, the "rogue team" is finally ready to show off what they've done.

Dead Space is the story of something that goes very, very wrong, very, very far out in space. Someone has to fix it, and of course, the main character, Isaac Clark (the name is taken from two writers, Asimov and Arthur C.), is caught in the middle. The game is a third-person title that may look like a shooter at first, but after only a few minutes you'll realize that this is much more survival horror than FPS. The back story is actually much more complex than most games of this ilk, but for the obvious reasons, most of it is still being kept under wraps.

We were able to spend an entire day playing the game and grilling the development team behind the title, and it seems like everyone on the dev team has had their hands in every step of the process. "We let creative people be creative. I looked at the artists and designers and said you're not an artist and you're not a designer, you're a game maker. I don't care where the best idea comes from, as long as it gets in this game," Schofield says.

The Plasma Cutter

This enthusiasm seems to have been infectious. We got to see a fully-functional, light-up helmet that mirrors the armor in the game. In fact, a member of the team spent hundreds of man-hours creating the main character's suit in real life, complete with the bolt cutter weapon from the game. We were shown both the gun and the helmet for that suit, and told that the creator was given the honor of wearing it at Comic Con to promote the game. "We'd like to stress this isn't something EA spent a lot of money on," one of our PR handlers chirps from the back of the room, a little nervous that something so tangential to the actual game is getting so much attention. The fact that this was done in someone's basement, without the company's money or approval, speaks volumes.

Schofield seems happy to finally be getting attention for his game, and at this stage we've been able to spend multiple hours with the title, exploring the environments, blowing away the monsters, getting cut in two. This is a game that fully earns its M-rating. For a moment during his speech, Schofield's face clouds. "It's not as violent as I would have liked," he says, and the crowd laughs for a moment, before the sound tapers off. He was serious.

In the next few pages we'll talk to the people behind the game, and look at why EA may be the unlikely savior of M-rated horror.